NERO 9

Good (but Not Perfect) Media Creation



Every fall since 1995. Nero and archrival Roxio have come out with new versions of their media creation suites. Since these suites made their debuts, many of their functions have been incorporated into operating systems or are available as freeware. Nero 9 is the better of the two titans this year, but the question still remains: Is either of these monstersuites still worth its price?

One capability in Nero 9 that you can't get in Windows or Mac OS X is B1u-ray authoring and burning, although I did encounter some problems during testing. You can also burn ISO disc images, and you get data recovery along with the Nero Live TV-watching software. Nero has also added some subtle changes to its interface with this version. including the ability to play. rip, burn, copy, and back up content right from the main window. without launching another of the suite's applications. Vision, the suite's video-editing component, has a simpler, more workflow-oriented interface, which aggregates the whole process of adding videos, transitions, effects, and text overlays with the process of authoring and burning a disc. For DVD burning, there are several ways to go about this, and Nero's burn time for our test image was 18 minutes, far better than Roxio's 35. Nero has also added Gracenote support for finding song and artist information tin music files, along with a Music Grabber
feature to capture soundtracks from videos and add diem to your MP3 library. Some downsides to Nero are that it crashed a couple of times during testing and that the setup is cumbersome and time-consuming.



The Nero suite also includes PhotoSnap and PhotoSnap Viewer, the latter of which duplicates existing viewers in Windows and Mac. Its Edit button takes you to the full Nero PhotoSnap, which lets you do things like crop images and fix red-eye and lens distortion. A couple of nice extras are the hot pixel fixer and the JPEG Artifact Remover. And the RescueAgent file recovery tool can back up either to local storage or to Nero's online service (for an extra fee). So while Nero wins over Roxio this year. I did not award either an Editors' Choice, because neither is as polished as it should be for the money-Neil Rubenking

PC Magazine January 2009

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NETWORK MAGIC PRO 5.0

No-Sweat Home Network Management

Home and small-office networks have spread like wildfire. But users attempting to configure, secure, and maintain those networks may too often feel as if they're battling a blaze in the Santa Ana wind. That's where Network Magic comes in. Though it doesn't yet succeed in its toughest challenge, making security effortless, it's still a valuable tool for the home or business user who isn't a tech expert but needs to manage a network of up to eight computers—along with attached devices like printers and NAS appliances.

If you are already a Network Magic user, the first thing you'll notice in this version is the improved control dashboard. The graphical interface displays a map of your network with pictorial representations of all the connected devices. Which the utility finds automatically. You can point and click to connect devices, control Internet access, and track online activity Sharing connections, files, and devices such as printers is is just as easy.

Every time you make a change—or more important, someone else does—a pop-up notifies you of the change, so you know what's happening at all times. Network Magic even finds and reports wireless devices that aren't broadcasting an SSID, so you'll know if someone is trying to connect clandestinely. Then you can isolate any unknown machines and mark them as intruders. Having this level of visibility is as usefttl as installing security software.



Unfortunately the product's most serious failing is in its most important new capability: the Change Wireless Protection (CWP) feature. through which Network Magic can enable WEP or WPA encryption on supported routers. In testing. CWP failed to work properly with my supposedly supported business muter, the Linksys WRVS4400N. As a result of the bug my testing uncovered, Cisco has, for the moment, taken business routers off the list of devices supported by CWP. Cisco's consumer routers, however, will still be supported. Although this is bad news for businesses, home users (especially networking novices) can still benefit greatly from Net work Magic.—Mario Morejon

PC Magazine January 2009

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OPENOFFICE.ORG 3.0

A Serious Rival to Microsoft Office

OpenOffice.org 3.0, is a free, open-source replacement for Microsoft Office. It is also the first and only
application suite that can be seriously considered a substitute for the massive power and flexibility of Microsoft's suite. OpenOffice.org used to look clunky and work slowly, but V3.0 is sleek and fast, retaining the essential look and feel of Office 2003 instead of imitating the new ribbon interface of Office 2007. That's a plus for many users who want as much continuity as possible when switching to a new application. OpenOffice.org doesn't include all of Office's features, but it does add some conveniences that Office can't provide, such as built-in PDF export and a single interface for opening and editing word-processing documents. HTML files, worksheets, presentations, and drawings. For government offices and corporations that don't want to depend on Microsoft (and don't want to continue paying Microsoft's prices ). OpenOffice.org 3.0 deserves an attentive look.

The suite has six basic components: Writer, a word processor and HTML editor; Cale, a spreadsheet; Draw, a graphics editor; Impress, a presentations program; Math, an equation editor; and Base, a database application. I was impressed with the way the interface hews closely to the familiar Microsoft Office 2003 standard and even improves on the placement of some menu items. However, I was less fond of the word processor's limited view options. In OpenOffice.org's spreadsheet, I missed the graphic flexibility of Excel's conditional formatting, but I managed well enough with the low-frills, 20th-century conditional formatting features.



Overall. I found performance impressively fast, on a par with that of Microsoft Office but with some limitations. File loading and saving, in all parts of the application, was almost instantaneous. OpenOfilce is also the only major application suite that runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux with almost exactly the same feature set on all platforms. Furthermore, it works astonishingly well with your existing Office does. Although it stillhas rough edges, OpenOffice's impressive feature set. a generally lucid interface, and pure open-source credentials are reason enough to give it a try—especially considering that it's absolutely free.—Edward Mendelson

PC Magazine January 2009

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Roxio Creator 2009

Plentiful media-management features come at a high price


IT CAN'T BE EASY for a mature software suite to remain relevant year after year, version after version, especially amid increasingly tough competition from commercial products and free tools. Such products must work ever harder to improve themselves, even when it seems like there's nothing left needing improvement. How has Roxio managed this with its $99.99 Creator 2009, the latest version of its ridiculously comprehensive
media-authoring suite? As it turns out, the update reflects both innovation and desperation.

Creator 2009 comes with a heavily revamped and streamlined Interface that makes it easier to find the most common tasks while adding a serious dose of elegant visual appeal. While the launcher for last year's
version, Easy Media Creator 10 Suite, was useful, it contained visual bloat that complicated the process of finding exactly the app you wanted. Creator 2009, however, has a scrubbed-up launcher that puts your six most commonly used functions front and center on the home page. Broader category listings (Data-Copy, Video-Movies, Music-Audio, Photo, and Online) are on the left, and links to videos, tutorials, and support options are on the right. You also
have the option to choose any of the category pages as your start page by simply clicking a pushpin icon next to the category header—a nice touch for personalizing the experience.
You have almost as much control over everything else you do in Creator 2009, as well. Want to burn data onto a CD? Use a simple drag-and-drop interface, a more advanced Explorer-style window, or even a backup utility to save whole folders with a single click. You're granted the same flexibility when it comes to video editing: Creator 2009 can make your video clips and photos into a movie automatically, or you can drag and drop everything into an advanced storyline or timeline view to arrange everything just the way you want it. For DVD
creation, the program lets you select from any number of pregenerated options or develop your own from scratch; similarly, ripping music horn a CD can be either a mindless or a more detailed process.

There's plenty of other useful functionality to be found, too: a three-step wizard for digitizing LPs and tapes, as well as modules for capturing audio directly from a sound card, converting content for easy playback on your portable devices, and sharing photos and videos using Roxio's integrated online services.

Not all of the available options are essential. A new function called "beat-matching" will rearrange and adjust the cross fades of music tracks you're burning to CD to create ideal dance mixes that flow smoothly from one song to the next. There's not much call for this, and in our tests it
didn't work very well: Vocals and tempos were frequently distorted, to distracting effect. (We recommend sticking with instrumental tracks with heavy beats for best results.) And while some users will undoubtedly appreciate the ability to automatically break audiobooks into workable chunks for a portable music player, we're not convinced that's a vital feature that couldn't already be decently replicated via Creator 2009's other audio-editing tools.

Alas, many of Creator 2009's functions have an antiquated quality about them anyway—Windows Vista and some freely available apps let you do many of the same things at roughly equivalent quality. True, Roxio's photo-editing feature is rather more robust than Windows Photo Gallery, with dedicated tools for removing wrinkles, blemishes, dust, and scratches and for fixing other imperfections. But the Roxio video-editing and DVD-authoring apps are more or less on par with Windows Movie Maker and Windows DVD Maker, and dedicated music managers such as Windows Media Player, Mines, and Zune have friendlieruser interfaces and can more conveniently catalog and spin songs than the Roxio tools can.



Creator 2009 has another shortcoming that should be a strength: HD. Although you can create Blu -ray discs with content directly from an AVCHD camcordet, you can't otherwise burn Blu-ray out of the box. For that, you'll need to drop $29.99 on an additional Blu-ray plug-in. bringing the total bill up to almost $130. And, even for that much money, you still won't be able to play Blu-ray discs using Creator 2009: for that, you'll need something like CyberLink's PowerDVD or Cores WinDVD 9 Plus Blu-ray. We understand the issues having to do with licensing fees and content-protection regulations, but it's still a notable omission in a package that offers so much else. —Matthew Murray

www.roxio.com

Computer Shopper January 2009

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Adobe Premiere Elements 7

HD and SD video editing for novices and hobbyists alike

NO, YOU DIDN'T BLINK and miss versions 5 and 6 of Adobe Premiere Elements. Adobe skipped a few numbers to bring the version number in line with its Photoshop Elements sibling. And with Premiere Elements 7, Adobe has also brought the $99.99 program more in line with the features of midrange video-editor competitors like Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9 and Corel VideoStudio X2. It's in no danger of harming sales of the $799 Premiere Pro CS4, but it no longer feels as if it was intentionally held back to ensure that it doesn't.

The program now imports video in AVCHD format, supporting newer HD camcorders like Canon's Vixia HF100, in addition to standard-definition and HDV high-definition video. The interface is easy to use, whether you're new to video editing or an old hand. For a quick video, simply drop video clips onto the sceneline, drop in transitions, and render the results.For more control, switch to the Timeline view, where you can work with up to three different video tracks, narration, and a soundtrack, making precise edits and adding advanced video effects.

As with previous versions, there's a good selection of professional-looking video
filters, transitions, and titling options for manual editing. New to version 7 is the InstantMovie feature, which does a surprisingly good job of taking selected clips and creating a movie from them in just a couple of steps, complete with titles, effects, transitions, and credits. Though there are 20 InstantMovie templates. we'd like to see more variety. For example, there's only one birthday template and two travel templates, so if you use the feature often, your videos will lack variety.

Other new features include Videomerge, an automatic compositing filter that creates a slick combination of two clips by replacing any solid-colored background with the second
clip, and SmartSound, which generates a musical soundtrack to match the length of your video or scene exactly.

Premiere Elements 7 works best when paired with Photoshop Elements 7; Adobe bundles the two programs for $149.99. They share the same Organizer database (listing all the videos, sounds, and stills in your library). and you can send still frames to Photoshop for editing or send slide shows to Premiere
Elements 7 for incorporation in an InstantMovie. The Organizer has been significantly optimized in this version. in Premiere Elements 4, if you had a large library of photos and videos it was nearly unusable, as it was so slow. Now it's a useful tool for locating and organizing video clips, particulary if you take advantage of the software's tagging functionality.


As with Photoshop Elements 7, Premiere Elements 7 works together with Photoshop.com. You get 2GB of online backup storage of your videos and photos for free (not much when
you're dealing with video) and the ability to view your backed-up clips and movies from any PC. In addition to 20GB or more of storage, Adobe promises new tutorials, themes, sounds,
and special effects on a regular basis for those who purchase a $30 Plus membership. Photoshop.com doesn't have public movie galleries, however, so you'll have to rely on YouTube or a personal Web site for sharing.

Once your video has been created, you can burn it to a DVD or Blu-ray disc, publish it directly to YouTube or a personal Web site, or render it to a file. You can create videos in the Adobe Flash Video. AVI, MPEG, Windows Media, and QuickTime formats.The AVI function supports additional codecs that you
install, such as DivX. Premiere Elements 7 can also create files for the iPhone, iPod, PlayStation Portable, and Zune; for 3rd
Generation Partnership Project-compatible cell phones; and for a number of other devices.

You'll want a powerful PC to use with Premiere Elements 7, particularly if you're editing HD video. The program will take full advantage of dual-and quad-core CPUs to speed up rendering,. You'll also want plenty of memory. On our 2GB test system, we got occasional warnings that Premiere Elements 7
was running low on memory. We also had a few crashes when rendering HD video, though we were working with a prerelease version of the program.



Premiere Elements 7 strikes an excellent balance between ease of use and flexibility. The only real frustration is the lack of variety in InstantMovie templates. We hope to see regular additions to the template selection for Photoshop.com Plus members; additional templates would make membership even more appealing. -Denny Atkin

www.adobe.com

Computer Shopper January 2009

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Webroot Secure Bakcup Takes on Free Services

THESE DAYS YOU can find sites that offer 2GB of online backup space for nothing, so you'd think that competing as for-a-fee storage service would be hard. But many space for their vital data than free services provide. That's the market niche that Webroot Secure Backup aims for with its storage options.

Webroot doesn't offer a free account, and its plans of $30 per year for 2GB of storage and $40 per year for 5GB of storage aren't terribly appealing next to the 2GB free offerings of competitors Fabrik and Mozy.

But Webroot offers 10GB for $50 a year, and that saves you $10: Beyond their free level, the next step up for both Fabrik and Mozy is $60 a year for unlimited backup.

Webroot includes features that Fabrik and Mozy lack, too, such as the ability to create and share password-protected folders. Another plus is that you can back up to a local drive well as to Webroot's online storage.

Unlike its competitors, Webroot doesn't create a virtual drive within Explorer. Instead, restore operations occur from within the backup client or via the Web.



My backups using Webroot went off without a hitch. And since reliability is not a problem, you can base your choise of a service on economics and on the features you need. If you want to share folders and you have between 5GB and 10GB of data to back up, Webroot Secure Backup makes sense. -Jon L. Jacobi

PC World November 2008

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Google's Convenient, Clever Web Browser

GOOGLE TAKES direct aim at Microsoft with the release of its Chrome Web Browser. And Microsoft should be worried: Chrome work in clever and convenient ways.

Chrome has a remarkably minimalist interface. You'll see a row of tabs running along the top, a Web address bar, and a bookmarks bar that appears beneath the address bar. Chrome doesn't have a full-scale menu bar or a title bar, and it has few distractions in its interface.

At the touch of a button, Chrome lets you make a desktop, Start menu, or QuickLaunch shortcut to any Web page or Web application, blurring the disctinction between what's online and what's inside your PC.

Chrome strips all of the toolbars from the window, leaving you with something that feels more like a desktop application than like an online app or a Web page.

Search is an integral part of Chrome, and Google introduces some clever features (for example, you can search Google or other sites directly from the addres bar). Chrome surpasses its competition by searching your browser history's page titles as well as page content.

Chrome can be a little unstable, which is not surprising in a beta program. Flash did not work on my Vista-based system, for example.


Google has produced an excellent browser that manages to be friendly and uncomplicated, yet powerful enough to meet the needs of more-advanced users. -Nick Mediati

PC World November 2008

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Photoshop Elements

Adds Online Features



ADOBE KNOW WHAT'S hot these days. And online photo sharing is more popoular than ever, thanks to sites like Flickr and Facebook.

With Photoshop Elements 7, Adobe provides ties to its new online service, Photoshop.com, and adds enough fresh features to the desktop application to make version 7 a worthwhile upgrade.

Photoshop.com, which incorporates Adobe's Photoshop Express online editing service, is offering two level of membership: a free 2GB Basic membership; and a $50 per year Plus membership that entitles you to 20B of storage. The free membership provides automatic backup of your images. When you edit pictures on the site, the revised file will sync up with your home PC's files-and vice versa.

New to version 7 of Photoshop Elements is a Smart Brush tool borrowed from the full Photoshop, as well as a handy Scene Cleaner that has been added to the Photomerge tool. This edition also lets users adjust the background tint from charcoal all the way to stark white. More good news: Photoshop Elements 7 has FTP settings. Unfortunately, it still lacks the Fade slider tool available in Photoshop.

The application continues to straddle the line between novices and more-seasoned users. It offers three levels of editing: Full Edit, Quick Fix, and Guided Editing. This arrangement feels a bit clunky at times, especially when you must blunder through menu options and tabbed screens to find advanced options such as editing color curves.



For anyone seeking a combination image editor and organizer that doesn't break the bank, Photoshop Elements 7 is a powerful contender. The online components permit you to do more from within a familiar interface, and its new tools alone make it worth the upgrade.- Kathleen Cullen

PC World November 2008

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NORTON INTERNET SECURITY 2009

Norton's Powerful Protection Won't Slow You Down




Most users love the protection security software gives them but hate the way it drags down their daily activities. Good News: Norton Internet Security 209 affects performance less than any suite I've tested. Most security tasks happen in the background during idle time. My performance tests confirm that Norton slows systems less than the rest.

The big independent antivirus testing labs all certify the efectiveness of Symantec's antivirus technology; those who have tested the 2009 edition find it improved. It scans files on demand, on access, and during idle time. A full scan took 50 minutes on my standard test system, but the Norton Insight feature reduced that to 5 minutes on later scans.

Norton scored better than other suites in the malware removal test, and it was unusually thorough. In th emalware blocking test it elimidated all but one of the malware samples before they launched. Overall it did better than all of the other suites and standalone antispyware products that I've tested with my current collection of malware. Norton's phishing protection works the same as of the 2009 edition and continues to be extremely accurate.




The firewall is hardened against malware, and it easily passed my barrage of Web-based assaults. and when I attacked a stest system using the Core Impact penetration tool, it blocked all the sample exploits.

The Network Security maps shows all the devices connected to your network and reports whether your wireless network is secure. From th emap you can remotely monitor other computers on the network that are also running Norton. And you can lock out specific devices by setting their trust level to restricted.

Spam protection, however, is useless. In testing, it tossed more than a third of my valid personal mail into the spam folder and missed nearly 30 percent of undeniable smap. Don't rely on this feature.

Norton's Itentify Safe is a password-protected way to store credentials and log in automatically. It also fills web forms with your predefined personal data, all protected by a strong master password.




This is definitely the slimmest, most unobstrusive Norton ever, yet its protection is top-notch where it counts. Despite a few weaknesses, it is the best all-around security suite I've ever seen: I'll be installing it on my own system.-Neil J.Rubenking

PC Magazine November 2008

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DRAGON NATURALLYSPEAKING 10 PROFESSIONAL

Talk to Your PC




Say the words "speech recognition software" and most people think of Dragon Naturally Speaking. Dragon has ruled the roost for years, partly because it's a perenially great piece of sotware, and partly from lack of competition. Event though Dragon now has rival products to contend with, it has secured its positions as the leading voide-recognition software with this new version. Here you get new automation tools, improved hands-free navigation, updates to the interface, and increased accuracy and speed.

Most general-purpose versions of the product include an Andrea NC-19 monaural headset, but the $349 Preferred Wireless Edition subtitutes a slock little Calisto Bluetooth headset from Plantronics. Dragon requires considerable PC muscle: a 1-GHz CPU and 1GB of free hard drive space at minimum, as well as 512MB of RAM. DUring setup, you create a user account, which involves choosing a language (U.K., U.S., Australian, Indian, or SE Asian English), a regional accent, and a microphone connection type. A vocabulary option lets you specify General, Command Only, or Teen. The Setup routine also requests that you read some of your e-mail and word-processing documents. All told, the installation process took me about 45 minutes.



I was very impressed at how accurately and quickly the program transcribed my test script, showing only occasional blips even when I spoke without pauses between words. You can actually decide on how much speed to trade for accuracy using a slider-a handy feature. But is Dragon better than the free translation feature in Vista? With straight forward text both were identical, but on more difficult materal Dragon made fewer mistakes than Vista. The more significant difference is that Vista shows a delay before producing text; Dragon was more prompt. Both programs let you launch other apps from the Start menu by speaking the command "Start Menu." For subsequent commands, Vista was more intuitive, but with Dragon, you also get time-saving Voice Shortcut.





Despite some problems-for example, typing while Dragon is running sometimes slows your system down- and an interface that's not polished as Vista's, Dragon is a serious dictation tool that beats Vista in accuracy, speed, and customization options, thus earning our Editors'Choice.-Michael Muchmore

PC Magazine November 2008

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